Beegam Panikkar

Описание: Beegam Panikkar - An adaptation of Satish Alekar's Begum Berve
Presents - Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit Fine arts Consortium

Cast
(In order of appearance)
Nanupilla - Libin Mathew
Thanupilla - Saranjith
Beegam Panikkar - Ramesh Varma
Kochunni - Arun Kumar

Back Stage
Music and Lyrics - Ramesh Varma

Musicians
Kalamandalam Baiju
Vishnuprabha V
Anjana Vijay
Kalamandalam Navaneeth Nambuthiri
Music execution - Arun C M

Set Design - Krishnan Varma
Assisted by - Anirudhann, S
Assisted by - Libin, Vipin

Property - Sreerag C Raju

Costume Design - Vanessa Meister
Assisted by - Nivin, Asha Devi
Makeup - S Sunil Kumar
Stage manager - Ratheesh

Direction - Kumara Varma
Assisted by - Prasanth Neelakanthan


Director’s Note

“Where can I go? I live below the staircase. The goers go up the stairs. I only count their footsteps.”
Barve in Satish Alekar’s Begum Barve.

At a cursory glance, Satish Alekar’s play Begum Barve looks so couched in a localised idiom, untameable to adaptation to other social milieus. Once this fallacy is realised, one discovers those features of the play that touch a universal chord and the endeavour to transform it into another milieu is facilitated effortlessly. Parallels in tradition, the social types of characters et cetera unfolded naturally in my imagination—thus the tradition of Sangeet Natak was replaced by Kathakali, Stree Party Barve got transformed into a Kathakali actor, Kunjupilla Panikkar (a namesake of the great Kathakali actor of the bygone era) and Begum Barve eventually got transformed into Beegam Panikkar.
The play speaks through a set of images like the dark interior below the staircase, the sound of the ascending footsteps, the incense stick that burns slowly spreading fragrance, the swing that swings back and forth like the mind, the monotony of khaki that pervades the boring existence, et al. Here the art of acting itself turns into a metaphor. An imaginary world of fantasy is created only to be brutally shattered later. Realising that his ‘revels are now ended,’ Panikkar has no option but to retreat to the dark dungeon of his existence, ‘crying to dream again’. After all acting is made of that very stuff of which ‘the dreams are made on’. Reality is cruel, much more than represented in theatre or in any form of art. Art can only allude to that.
In Begum Barve Satish Alekar has deftly juxtaposed the sublime and the ridiculous. On one side is the grinding poverty of Barve, the indignities he suffers, the unfulfilled dreams of the lowly clerks, the unexciting, dull and boring routine of their existence and on the other is the picture of a theatre of Barve’s dreams with its enchanting music, exalted characters and situations. As a result, if one picture looks intensely pathetic and absurd the other is out of sync with the realities of time.
So, Begum Barve is here before you disguised as Beegam Panikkar; hope that ‘she’ will be able to take you through the fantasies as Begum Barve does.

KUMARA VARMA


The Department of Theatre, Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit, is unique in the sense that it combines training in traditional theatre forms like Kootiyattam, along with modern theatre study and practice. Because of this uniqueness, the department has drawn attention of theatre persons from India and abroad, contributing to substantial work in terms of noteworthy productions, workshops and interactive seminars. As a result, the department has remained an active centre of theatre activity, since its inception in 1995.